Questioning

Questioning and posing problems - Do you know that questions vary in complexity? Can you use questions as a strategy to search and find solutions? Can you use questions in science to pose problems that can be solved experimentally?
Before, when I had questions that I did not understand, I would not ask the teacher or my classmates. Instead, I would go home and try to figure it out by myself; sometimes, if the questions are difficult and I cannot solve them, I would just set them aside and assume that they would not be tested. Because of this behavior, I got bad grades during tests because I did not know how to solve those questions. For the energetics test, I did not know how to answer 6b (if the heat of combustion of ethanol is -715kJmol-1, how much energy (in kJ) would that amount of ethanol be able to produce?) because prior to the test, although I had questions like that, I did not ask any one for the solution, causing me to not be able to solve that queston. Another example of gettig points off questions (whether easy or hard) isthat during the Kinetics test, I did not ask whether it was neccessary to have significant figures. I thought about rounding the numbers to 2 sig figs, but I did not thnk that asking the teacher was neccessary since during class, we did not round the numbers up. If I had asked if sig figs was needed, I would not have gotten points off that question. As I finally asked questions about things that I was unsure of, I did get them right on tests. On the Acids & Bases test, for questin 12 (wht is the pH of a 1.23 x 10^-4 M solution of sulfuric acid?) and question 13 (if 5.2g of alminium hydroxide are dissolved in 240mL of water, what is the pH of the resulting solution?), we had to multiply the pH by the number of moles of H. Luckily, I had asked my classmates whether we needed to multiply it, so I knew how to do it on the test. This made me realize the importance of asking questions you are unsure of. Not only does it add to your knowledge, it also helps you on tests and quizzes.



The formulation of a problem is often more essential that its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. - Einstein